Hate Thy Neighbour – Racism In The 1970s
By Truth42
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When I was nine years old my parents did something to me that I would never dream of doing to a child. I know this because I was talking to my wife about this over the weekend and we both agreed about the damage that it can cause. What they did was move me away from my school in Burnley, Lancashire, to another school in Bristol, Avon (as the county was called in those days).
No big deal. People move house all the time. But while there was certainly no malice involved on their part, no evil intent, the 200 miles or so of separation had cataclysmic consequences for me. All at once my cosy life in a small but friendly Northern working class town was over. I had lost my place. I was suddenly dislocated. Everything about my life was different in every way. And the relocation gave me my first taste of what it was like to suffer racism, or rather its distant cousin ‘regionalism’.
The journey from North to South marked me as something outside the norm. Sure I looked the same as my new schoolmates: I was and remain whiter than white in complexion, however much I lie on the beach. However, the moment I opened my mouth made me a marked man. My deep northern accent represented a huge contrast to the west country Bristolian dialect sported by practically everyone I came into contact with. It marked me as an outsider. I was different to almost everybody else in school. And my schoolmates inevitably reacted to this difference in a variety of ways.
Some seemed not to notice it and treated me no differently to anybody else. Others saw it as an opportunity to improve their standing in the school at the expense of my own. And a small minority saw it as a chance to bully somebody who wasn’t the same as them. But I was a relatively hardly child; in an even battle I could usually give a good account of myself. Black eyes and bruises became a regular part of my school uniform; and they gained the approval of my father, who saw them as a badge of honour. When I was outgunned I simply used my wiles – pretending to be unconscious on the floor, for example, when a much larger boy once attacked me.
It didn’t help that I went to two other schools in Bristol (thus I was put through the thoroughly harrowing process of relocation three separate times) before eventually settling in a large comprehensive with probably a 3:1 ratio of white school kids to black. It was there that I encountered others who were also outsiders. Because that’s what they were. Black people were outsiders: objects of ridicule, objects of fear and misunderstanding. And subjects of all the sorts of things that I as an outsider had been experiencing. It was small wonder that they tended to keep to their own groups.
This is was in the 1970s. And if you think we’ve got it bad now you’ve only got to take a look at some of the TV programmes that were around at the time and how black people were depicted in them.
To name but a handful there was ‘The Black And White Minstral Show’, in which white people ‘blacked up’ and sang to white audiences (I remember that one show actually had white people ‘blacked up’ wearing kilts and singing in pigeon Chinese while pinching their eyes to depict Chinese eyes!). There was ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ which celebrated British colonialism by simultaneously attacking anybody who happened not to be born in England (the Scots, Welsh and Irish were also fair game) or was homosexual (woe betide you if you were gay in that era).
There was ‘The Comedians’, in which an ugly array of working class ‘comics’ took savage pot shots at black people, at Asian people, at gay people, at fat people, at women; in fact, anybody who wasn’t a working class ‘comedian’.
Last but not least shameful there was ‘Love Thy Neighbour’, in which a black couple move next door to a white couple and are subjected to untold jibes and crass insults concerning cooking pots, tribal dancing and their inherent laziness while routinely being called ‘nig-nog’ and ‘Sambo’ by their smug, beer swilling, pot-bellied neighbour. Even in those days it was utterly amazing that such a program could be shown on mainstream TV. Even more incredible was the fact that some 7 million viewers regularly tuned into to watch this racist, reactionary celluloid disgrace. (In an apparent attempt to redress the balance, the black couple got the chance to call their neighbours ‘white honkies’.)
No small surprise then that in this climate of institutionalised racism trouble was not always far away in the playground. Fights between groups of black and white boys were a regular occurrence in the playground and at the school gates. In the home, too, racism was commonplace. Whenever she was looking for someone to blame for anything at all, large or small, my mother had no problem at all pointing the finger at ‘those coons’ as she called them (like many people nowadays she will deny it). While my father played it another way, boasting about the fact that he drank in the pub with a number of black people and that ‘there’s not a lot of difference really’. Apparently some of his best friends were black.
Yet from all this I somehow managed to emerge relatively liberal. Not politically I hasten to say, but ethically. And I think it was all down to the fact that like many of the racial minorities at my school (West Indians, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese) I knew what it was like to be different. Even though my difference was in only in the way that I spoke it was enough to set me apart from the majority. And that’s often enough.
Because isn’t it true that we live in a world of racism? That it’s hard-wired into our very essence? I’m always fond of pointing out that our sense of tribalism is so deeply ingrained that if you walk down the street in North London wearing white on a Saturday afternoon you’re quite likely to get a smack from somebody wearing red. And it was the same in Bristol all those years ago when I was a kid: if you wore blue on a Saturday you were at war with those who wore red.
And this is why my wife and I we are staying put. We could easily put our London flat up for sale and get six or seven bedrooms in Kent in return. But we both understand the potential damage this could cause to our daughter, who is at a crucial stage in her development. Because to this day that move from North to South all those years ago still leaves me an outsider.
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Very interesting. My sister
Very interesting. My sister suffered terribly after moving from inner city Liverpool to the stick in Northern Ireland at the end of the 70s. Now she's a total native! Extra thick country accent to boot. I went the opposite way around ten years ago and still get the odd period of silence or look from those who remember (or remember the TV reporting) of the troubles. We are thinking of moving our kids up north so all in here is terribly relevant right now. Fascinating read.
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hello. I had to comment on
hello. I had to comment on this because I came back to Bristol (actually the West Country not the South, that's way over there by London!) in the '70's, from Seychelles. From eleven, my fifth school was a comp. Each school, between two different countries, got gradually worse, each new day harder. I couldn't understand what they were saying - jammy dodger, gert mint??? Added to this, my dad's a vicar, and that's another story, a whole separate brand of prejudice, so much that I don't usually tell people what his job is! So burn after reading! All I can think is that looking back, everyone in that school was afraid. Outsiders are easy targets. Now my default button is steer clear of the crowd. But I'm watching the reruns of Andrew Marr's History of the World and take great comfort from the idea that we're all descended from the same woman in Africa.
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fascinating piece - and all
fascinating piece - and all the sadder for the fact that it seems to be becoming more acceptable to be this way now. What does gert mint actually mean?
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Ha! Years of research led me
Ha! Years of research led me to believe that it's an expression of measurement coupled with an expression of excellence, mint. Put them together and whattaveyagot! Something absolutely blooming lovely. But then I don't think they could understand my at the time Seychellois accent. I can't remember it's name but someone leant me a book years ago about these kinds of experience, of moving around. One interesting thing was that it was hard to rebel because you didn't have a norm. It definitely leads to bottled up anger though and you've certainly hit a seam here.
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Excellent writee, Ian. I
Excellent write, Ian. I remember the same sort of difficulty when my family moved from Manhattan to Queens - an outter borough of New York City - I had to transfer from my all-white catholic school to a racially mixed public school. It was a difficult transformation. Difficult because when you raise a child to fear a race, without ever knowng why you should have that fear, other than being told how frightening they were, It's bound to sour your spirit. It wasn't until a few years later that I remember becoming more sensitive to what was going on in the world around me. It was in 1968 when I reported to my father that Martin Luther King had just been shot. His only words were, "Well, it's about time." It hit me like a punch in the gut. Didn't really see it coming, but I should have. My dad was a good man, but like a lot of people of his generation white ruled and everyone one else needed to know their place. And what worries me now is that things seem to be getting worse. People over here under the illusion that black president equals problem over. No one seems to want to discuss racism and how to solve the problem.
Sorry, I'm rambling, didn't realize I was geting so wordy. At my desk at work on a slow day. Much enjoy your writing, Ian.
Cheers,
Rich
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Hi Ian, just thought I would
Hi Ian, just thought I would try to contact you here as well as ABC email. Wondering if you can make the Nottingham Reading and would definitely like to read, when you get chance, it would be much appreciated. Hope your summer's good - you may be on holiday - apologies if so. Thanks. Ray
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Thanks for getting back to me
Thanks for getting back to me, Ian, will flag up the email issue, not sure what happened. Hope to meet you at another reading event in the future.
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Accents can be telling but
Accents can be telling but sometimes I don't know what they tell us. I have two Scottish daughters and moved to the Westcountry while the big one was 11 and the little 'un was four. Within a few months little 'un was saying 'moy name is Jess' as if she was Westcountry born and bred and her sister took a few months longer to lose her Scots accent. These days the elder one is 29 and has quite a 'well-spoken' voice and her sis is broad Devon. I also have a friend who moved from the Elephant and Castle to Exmouth about 52 years ago and still sounds completely Cockney.
I think how we speak may be about identity and belonging and it is not a 'daylight' deliberate choice, it happens somewhere at the back of the mind. I have an accent that sometimes moves around because of moves in my life and wanting to keep all my places.The same is true of my vocabulary in terms of formality/informality. And obviously no-one should be bullied or made to feel small because of the way we speak.
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It's great to see another
It's great to see another comment on this because I really identified with this and hadn't forgotten it. Truth 42, maybe you have unconsciously gone for the neutral, non indentifiable BBC type accent,so as not to be pinned down to a place that you felt an outsider in? The English accent is in the shires and the cities, not in the posh accent that people always say is so English. That accent's the same the world over, I think. But when you don't feel at home anywhere, you reject it becasue you don't want to sound like the people bullying you. I rejected the Bristol accent when I hated it here so much. I'd had 'go back to where you come from' in both word and deed. When I was about 17 I tried to invent my own accent and I think some bits came straight out of Lawrence Olivier doing Shakespeare - ie stressing the wrong syllable! Ha! Thanks again for such an honest piece of writing.
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